Corianis Colony Log 3

[Crash Calestorm 0]

USS Jackrabbit NCC-2421

Corianis Colony Mission Log 3

Main City/Outlying Mining Camps

Lower Atmosphere Hopper Shuttle Patrol Run

 

It was a bright and clear sunny day on the surface of the world known as the Corianis Colony, currently in Federation possession and a prime producer of the precious dilithium fuel that the Federation Starfleet employed for use on their starships and space stations.

 

It was unfortunate that the overall cheerful weather patterns did not seem to coincide with the mood and outlook of the colony residents and the current situation.

 

Captain Ashton Marie Calestorm flew one of the Jackrabbit’s work shuttles in a patrol course over the main city, keeping both her eyes as well as her tracking programs alert for any problems that she spotted on the ground below. The blond haired middle aged human mentally frowned at the condition of the forward windshield view port; the protective transparent aluminum covering was covered in, well, bird droppings, so she assumed the last patrol group on the roster rotation had had a close encounter with the local avian population.

 

The main city of the colony wasn’t overly large, only containing about fifty or so administrative buildings, stores, businesses, or homes, none of which went over four or five stories. Most of the structures were the typical one storied domed or rectangular shaped pre-fabricated Fleet issue building materials. As you got farther away and out from the main colony city, the mining camps would begin to pop up. These camps were typically located on one project site for a few years as the area was mined for dilithium, and the one story dome homes, structures or tents within the camps matched the same building materials as the main metropolis center.

 

The planetary surface itself was a standard Class M configuration: some bodies of waters, forests, flat lands, mountains. It was a pretty planet, provided that the dilithium salvage and production companies didn’t strip mine the resource planet to the point where it became a floating ball of rock, which was always a risk. Corianis also boasted a small ground based hanger facility, as well as a small orbital docking platform that only had the capacity to cater to small civilian transport or cargo vessels, and any overflow transport of dilithium could also be stored within the cargo holds of the platform as well. An administrative office was located within the orbital facility, and the managers that worked there were on detached duty from the main city administration center on the surface of the planet.

 

Calestorm did one final flyby at the optimum planetary atmosphere distance, and then began her arc run out of the main city airways proper. Her intended shuttle patrol course now was to check out some of the outlying mining camps set along the northwestern coast to see how these groups and sites were faring during the general upheaval of these last couple of weeks.

 

As she passed over some of the outlying city buildings, she caught smoke plumes traveling upwards on the wind from burned out fires that had been contained by the damage control and fire brigades the night before; several roving mine worker factions had been marching in protest, and things had gotten a bit out of hand. She knew that her crew had started to get rough with any rioters, and while her conscious would creep up on her at intervals over giving the order in the first place, but her orders from Fleet Command were clear and the situation was to be immediately contained with no exceptions. There had been no deaths during the management clashes as of yet, but the mine workers kept getting more and more frustrated with the working conditions and the local administration. The local civilian militia was completely overwhelmed with trying to keep order, and in certain cases let a lot of things slip past them because some of the militia volunteers agreed with the mine workers and their angry protests over the colony situation. The local colony administrators were also getting hyper, and were effectively caught in between their own workers, the local police keeping forces, and Starfleet as the Federation central command on Earth dictated that Cale and her crew regain control of the planet at all cost.

 

And, the USS Agincourt was currently on route to Corianis as well to provide further assistance to contain the situation, which probably meant that the individuals at Starfleet Command who had been assigned to the colony problem were determined that the colony world be made an example of. Calestorm was guessing at that reasoning however; she was a quarterdeck breed, not a desk bound jockey, and didn’t much care for administrative types. She just went were her border patrol orders took her, and did her dang job.

 

She passed three of her pilots traveling in the opposite direction across the city proper on a planetary wide patrol, and received a quick acknowledging flash as the junior pilots activated their vehicle running lights as her Atmo Hopper shuttle and their Valkyrie starfighters winged past one another. For now, the Jackrabbit fighter patrols were set on a standard grid web pattern, and whether or not the Valkyrie pilots would be cleared to strategically strafe an area of trouble would fall squarely on Cale’s shoulders when she gave that order.

 

Her crew was small enough, topping out at exactly one hundred, that everyone on board the USS Jackrabbit pulled their weight for a variety of duties -- even the ship’s captain. Which translated to the fact that she had taken on one of the planetary sector patrol runs for this afternoon. She had passed over the outer perimeter of the main city, and was now flying a low patrol pattern across her final section of the planetary grid. While the shuttles would never be as diverting as piloting a starfighter, she enjoyed the smaller-sized Atmo Hopper shuttles that were currently the exclusive property of the border patrol fleets. The transport craft were indispensable when it came to colony world missions such as this one, and this particular Hopper had been retrofitted back to its full shuttle form by one of her engineering crews. The retro fit bulkhead and deck plating offered extra protection and the like, and the cargo area had been scaled back and the passenger seats re-installed along with an aft control console that could be booted up in an emergency to control some of the ship board engineering and environmental systems.

 

Cale’s main pilot console blipped, indicating that the Jackrabbit was comming her via the ship to ship internal wireless. Easily multitasking, the Captain flicked a series of switches to enable her own assigned comm signal to tap into the required communications line.

 

“Calestorm here Jackrabbit, what’s the word.”

 

“McCall here Cale. Just wanted an update on your patrol course.”

 

“On the final vector grid now and I’ll be returning to the ship in about thirty.”

 

“Good to know. Are you going to grace movie night with your presence and take a few hours off? So far, we have no alerts from the colony, so I think we’re pretty clear to let the second and third shifts oversee the watch tonight with standard protocols.”

 

Once a year her XO, Lucas McCall, would host a movie night that had become known as ‘Hare Raising’. The featured movie in question was a god awful ancient one dee film by the name of Night of the Lepus. The so called plot line dealt with genetically mutated rabbits that ran rampant across the countryside.

 

Her first officer, being the sick and demented individual that he was, had immediately seen the potential and connection between the USS Jackrabbit and Lepus – which was the genetic designation for the Earth based rabbit species that her ship shared a name with … Lord help her.

 

How this film had ever survived -- and been remastered into both a one dee regular disc offering to be played on a data PADD as well as a four dee interactive holodeck offering -- to the 24th century, Calestorm didn’t know. Granted, it fell into the category of campy horror, and that might have been the main reason as there was large market of horror fans across the universe that would be interested in all things horror film from the late 20th century of Earth … no matter how atrocious the entertainment content was.

 

McCall was also a horror fan, so this was all par for the course she supposed. Would she be gracing the movie night with her presence? That would be a negatory.

 

“Lucas, I am not coming to sit through that god awful movie again. I’ve seen it a few times already, thank you, and I still can’t find my brain cells that got evaporated from the pure stupidness. It’s bad enough the crew wears those simple ass rabbit ear costumes that you bring; do you realize how disconcerting it is to see your officers and crew wearing rabbit ear bands on their heads? It’s bad enough when us Humans do it, but the last time tr’Astorix, Thraxen and Koral did it,” she said, referring to the resident pointed eared Romulan, blue skinned and antennae’d Andorian, and forehead ridged Klingon crewmates on board the ship, “ …. a Romulan, Andorian and Klingon with the fake rabbit ears? That is just … very wrong, on so many levels. It’s like I’m surrounded by, well, giant jackrabbits. You know, I had plenty of dealing with those little varmints growing up in the rural South without encountering them in the depths of space, thanks.”

 

Commander McCall’s infectious laughter exploded across the ship to ship wireless, and she couldn’t help but smile, even though he couldn’t see her over the audio only wireless. His personality hadn’t changed much over the years, and he still retained some of that boisterous stick jock persona from when the two of them ran the Valkyrie fighters together. In some ways, she missed those days. Life had been simpler before she took on the ship command track … yet she’d never give it up.

 

“Crash, that’s the whole point of movie night: to have some down time. And both Nisho and Thrax enjoy messing with the Human contingent of our crew when they sport the ears, and Koral just wants the crew get some downtown. You come, we eat popcorn, you watch a so bad it’s good Earth horror movie about hares, and we all wear giant rabbit ears and look like complete idiots.”

 

“Not tonight. I got some duty rosters and update reports to read over.”

 

“Those can keep until tomorrow morning. Knowing you, you’re probably not behind in your Corianis paperwork anyway.”

 

“Lucas, yer startin’ to push it.”

 

“Actually, I’m trying to save you like the gallant second in command officer that I am.”

 

A derisive snort.

 

“You’re degrading into Cale grunt speak. I can tell that you know I’m right.”

 

The captain now grumbled a few choice complaints over the wireless communication line.

 

“Hey, you’re the one that actively recruited her, you know her better then I do, but we both know what she’s capable of. She’ll stab you with a sedative hypo, and drag you to the movie screening bodily … and that’d be a pretty entertaining sight now that I think about it.”

 

Insert captaincy level patented Calestorm complaints here.

 

“Look, Cale, word of advice here from your long time friend and Exec: our ships doctor is six foot two -- I believe that’s about two or three inches give or take on you -- outweighs you by about twenty pounds, is entirely too protective like all doctors of her profession, swears better then any marine or sailor I’ve ever met, and if she thinks you need a break, not much you can do about it unless you enjoy being figuratively hip checked into the deck plating every time you buck her.”

 

Another verbal spew of choice complaints could be heard over the private wireless conversation. It was true though that Koral didn’t quail whenever Ash went on one of her “clear the decks folks, the CO’s on a rampage” mood.

 

“You get no sympathy. Next time? Recruit a doctor who’s much shorter then you and doesn’t weigh as much and isn’t inclined to do her job well. I’m just saying, off the record, that our ships doctor knows you’ve been pulling triple shifts with this Corianis mission, and she’s prowling for you my dear Captain.”

 

“Aw dang.”

 

“Trust me: movie night equals a couple hours of downtime with a really bad Earth vintage horror flick, versus a cranky Klingon doctor on your tail.”

 

Time to exercise the better part of valor, thought the Captain to herself. “…. Fine. I’ll be there. I need to think about wearing those crazy ears though.”

 

A faint chuckle could be heard, and then Lucas spoke again over the wireless from his end of the conversation. His tone was smug, but good natured. “Good, I’ll let Doctor Koral know you’ll be taking the evening off. Steady home Captain and see you in a little bit, Commander McCall out.”

 

She did a low fly by on the final mining camp she had come across during her coastal patrol course, close enough to make out the clothing that the miners and workers were wearing and a couple species here and there. The Hopper’s proximity sensors started to bling a warning, but she ignored the alarms sounding from her control console and continued to steadily pilot the Hopper shuttle. A few of the ground based planetary residents, recognizing her shuttle as Starfleet, waved. She dipped her Hopper in greeting to return the waves, but even as she completed the friendly gesture, she felt the muscle in her chest and neck constrict with tension and a bit of sadness.

 

That was the kicker: not everyone on Corianis was taking part in the riots. Sure, the problem was widespread, but it hadn’t consumed the whole colony planet, and not every colonist was involved with the whole mess. So far, the coastal areas remained relatively unhindered with the interior problems. Not yet, at least. But that fact remained that the colony situation was getting to a fever pitch as the colony administrators and management continued to go at it with the protesting mine workers.

 

But, that wasn’t Cale’s call to make, and certain ranking elements at Fleet Command in ‘Frisco seemed determined to contain the colony situation no matter who or what … and she would follow her orders.

Edited July 8, 2009 by Capt Calestorm